Somebody Loved You
by Cranberry-skies
Summary: John learns to cope with Sherlock's death by slowly reconstructing himself. And leaving things behind.


The mornings were the hardest. Waking up meant that reality invaded his brain slowly, like a string of water that quickly became a wave so powerful that it crushed his mind. It destroyed all his barriers when he was at his weakest, drowning him with only one thought: '_He_'s dead, it's over'.

In those moments, John lied on his back, choking on his memories as he felt the tears burn his eyes until they ran silently along his cheeks. He preferred waking up from the nightmare - the one which seemed to have replaced all the other nightmares he used to have: a figure in a long coat falling endlessly from a cold, grey building. At least when he woke up from this dream, he was prepared. A dreamless sleep was not so merciful - it was an infinitely more painful return to the harsh reality where Sherlock Homes was dead after a night of blissful unawareness.

After a few weeks, waking up was still the most difficult, but the tears became just a sting in his eyes while staring at the ceiling and taking steady breaths.

After a few months, reality sometimes didn't crash on him when he had just woken up, and it was only when he walked into the kitchen with its table, bare of any experiments, that he remembered. Those mornings, he always felt guilty for forgetting, and the sharp pain of the memory felt like a well-deserved punishment. After another month, the pain turned into a dull ache – deeper, but less vivid. But, it still hurt to see the table and the empty fridge in that quiet kitchen. John decided it was time he moved out.

His new flat was small and impersonal, but it was clean and conveniently close to the practice, where he was now working full-time. John did not like being alone there; the sound of the fork on his plate when he was eating alone seemed to echo too loudly in the thick silence, only disturbed by the occasional sirens far away on the main road, or the muffled sounds coming from the TV of his old neighbours above. He didn't like being alone, but most of all, he didn't like being lonely.

One year exactly after the fall, he sat on his couch after a long day of work with a bottle of whiskey, intending to get drunk. He fell asleep after only three glasses and when he woke up the next morning, he realised the sadness had been replaced with anger and self-hatred. He put the bottle in a cupboard and didn't open it again.

The first year after he left 221b, he visited Mrs. Hudson regularly, about once a month. He always stayed in her kitchen, nibbling at a cookie and sipping his tea with a lump in his throat. They never spoke about Sherlock. _His _presence was here, impossible to avoid. They only chatted about his new work, how the hip was going, and other meaningless things of the everyday life. He never asked if she had new tenants for the flat. She never said. After a while, his visits became more sporadic, never quite stopping, but nearly. They didn't have much to say anyway.

He tried to date for a bit, but most of the time it didn't go anywhere. He knew it was his fault; he craved company but he was wary of letting people get too close to him now. He knew how much it hurt to lose such people, especially after having given them his love. _Trust issues_, a little voice in his head said to him. John didn't listen to it. He just gave up on relationships for a while.

When Mary walked into his life - or rather his office - with her cheeks flushed from the flu and her disarming smile, he wasn't expecting it. When she was not his patient anymore and the pink colouring of her face was only due to his compliments over coffee on how radiant she was that day, the warm feeling across his chest felt like the first ray of sun in spring after a long winter.

The first morning he awoke beside her, watching her breathe quietly in the dim light coming through the curtains. She was all he could think about.

Little by little, toothbrush after T-shirt, evidence of two people living side by side took over the flat. One day, John stared at the two mugs on the table that contained a few drops of cold coffee and he couldn't remember being so happy. He wondered if he had been that happy before, back when he was living with Sherlock. However, he couldn't quite remember how it was. He would never experience it again, anyway, and he didn't want to look back, so there was no point in trying to compare.

Two years after Sherlock's fall, John talked to Mary about him. She was understanding and patient, listening to him silently and prompting him to continue only when he was getting lost in his thoughts. The grip of her hand in his gave him strength and he never felt so grateful towards someone. After this conversation he realised it wasn't that hard to talk about Sherlock anymore. From that day on, he started mentioning things they had done together, things he said, little details which were important. It didn't hurt as much to walk near Baker Street or to mention the crazy experiments to Mary. It didn't hurt as much because Mary was there, looking at him with her kind eyes and a smile curling her lips.

The domesticity between the two of them was what he liked the best. He learned to appreciate the evenings together, watching bad movies and laughing at the bad plots. He surprised himself, listening with wonder to the sounds of the shower, knowing that someone he loved was alive and doing banal things like everyone else. He never thought about these kinds of things when he was living with Sherlock. Maybe because his love for him was different, or maybe because he had loved, lost, and finally realised how important it was to notice and enjoy those moments. But now he would never know.

Sherlock's memory was living in him now, most of the time he didn't acknowledge it, but at times, resurfacing in his mind. He couldn't say it was a comforting presence, however, because every memory brought back strings of 'What ifs' and the unavoidable guilt that he could have done something, anything, to prevent all of this from happening. And sometimes, when he was lying in the dark with Mary's warm body against his side, he couldn't hold back disturbing thoughts; thoughts which whispered to him that if he had stayed with Sherlock, if he were still alive, he would never have met Mary, and he would never have fallen in love with her. In such moments, dread, self-disgust, and guilt clenched his belly and he couldn't help but think that maybe it was better for him that way.

Over the time, it was getting harder and harder to remember how his former life had been. Not the events - they were still stored in his mind - but the way it felt to be side by side with the world's only consulting detective. He would try and remember, with fondness, how it was to argue about toenails in the fridge and password-protected laptops. Sometimes, it looked like all of it was a dream. Those moments were the most dangerous, because he would forget that Sherlock was dead, gone forever, but consciousness always took its toll and the consciousness of the finality of death struck hard and unforgivingly when you were expecting it the least.

Three years later, John only realised it was _that_ particular day when, in the evening, he set his alarm clock for the next day and saw the glowing numbers indicating the date. Only the night witnessed the guilt flashing through his eyes.

Three years, four months and fifteen days after saying goodbye, Sherlock Holmes came back from the dead.

When John punched Sherlock that time, he didn't avoid his precious cheekbones.

* * *

Hello everyone! I've been around the fandom for a while now, but this is my first fanfic ever. There are so many wonderful post-reichenbach fics around, I know, but I really needed to write this one, for plenty of reasons. I hope you liked it, English is not my native language so any feedback or comment would be useful ;-)  
Thanks a lot to my betas giddy4kittiez and ominousmagic, you rock!


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